


Good is Better Than Perfect

by chaseandcatch



Category: Death Note
Genre: Mentions of Violence, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 09:29:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8440342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaseandcatch/pseuds/chaseandcatch
Summary: Matsuda, post-canon, written for the Secret Shinigami Halloween Exchange 2016.
Prompt: "Anything with Matsuda being happy, preferably no pairing."
Title from Regina Spektor's Man of a Thousand Faces.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [baleful-ninja](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=baleful-ninja).



Matsuda clutches the bag of oats close to his side, glances to the left. There’s a half-heard chime of birds in a nearby tree, the soft rustle of wind against the autumn leaves. The air smells cold and crisp, but it’s refreshing, relieving; the tang of salt.

The plane ride to America had been peaceful enough, but when he’d gotten off – the noise, the flurry of loud colours and fast-spoken English, the presence of so many people at once – it’d almost made him book a flight home on the same day.

Near hadn’t thrown eighty thousand yen into his bank account for him to back out on the first day, though, so he waited it out. Decided to give New York a day or two to make him comfortable.

This is day five.

Matsuda breathes in through his nose, long and deep. Lets the chill into his lungs. Feeling is nice, he thinks. He missed feeling.

The sun sits in the west, the sky framing it with creeping darkness, gradually following the sun further and further down. He glances to the left – two children, running, playing. One pushes at the other, not even hard enough for him to step backwards, pokes out his tongue at her.

“I’m telling Mom,” the girl says, pushing him back, “you idiot!”

The girl runs off, and the boy follows, yelling something about being sorry, something that Matsuda doesn’t really catch, because a gunshot cuts it off. 

Probably accidental fire, Matsuda thinks distantly, as his surroundings begin to twist.

_“Matsuda, you idiot!”_

The bag of oats disappears from his hand, the park goes dark and dusty. Matsuda can feel the hard concrete beneath his soles, the hot barrel of the pistol sitting at the edge of his fingertips, shaky hands pointing forward, forward and down-

_“Who the hell do you think you’re shooting at?!”_

A horrible, wretched sound comes out of Light, like the screeching right before a car crash. He’s staggering from side to side, blood slicking down from his wrist, the one Matsuda just shot open. Trickling in thin streams and dripping to the floor.

The room skips forward, then, jumps ahead to Light falling back against the Yellowbox floor. Three more gunshots ring out, loud and clear and hot at his fingertips, and Matsuda is shaking, shaking like a leaf in a hurricane, walking closer, aiming his pistol down at Light’s head and  _he has to die-_

-there’s pressure against Matsuda’s hand. Cold pressure. Wet pressure.

Matsuda shuts his eyes, hard. Counts to three. Opens.

The Warehouse dissolves, Light’s body disappears. The air goes cold again.

Matsuda looks to the side, in the direction he thinks he heard the shot from. The sound fires off, and a bright blue firework shoots up into the sky, fills it up. Not even a real gun.

(A woman had a gun poking out of her back pocket at the airport, and Matsuda had almost tackled her before he remembered the difference in gun laws. Threw up in the nearest bathroom, splashed some water on his face. Tried not to think about how guns work, how bullets sound when they fire out of the barrel, how they sound when they hit people.

It had taken him half an hour to stop shaking.)

His fingertips still feel hot.

A whine comes from his side, and Matsuda looks towards it.

Joyce has her jaw locked around his palm, not biting hard enough to hurt. Not even hard enough to make a mark. Matsuda hadn’t come outside for months before Aizawa had pushed him into getting a service dog. 

Joyce pushes the pressure a little firmer, keeping her eyes locked with Matsuda’s.  _I am here,_ she’s saying.  _You are here. You are okay._

Matsuda takes a few more breaths to steady himself, and curls his hand around the back of her head. Scruffs the dusted-cinnamon fur there. She releases his hand in the same heartbeat, and sits back, gives him a meter of space. Keeps her eyes on him.

Matsuda kneels down, picks up the bag of oats he’d dropped, transfers it to under his arm.

“Good girl,” he says, ruffles up the rest of her fur, lets himself revel in how gorgeous she is for a moment. “Good  _girl.”_

Joyce opens her mouth, gives Matsuda a big, sloppy lick across the cheek. He laughs at that, laughs like sunlight, wraps his arms around her. Presses his face into her coat, takes a few more breaths.

_You are here. You are okay._

“Excuse me.”

The voice sounds impatient, young. Matsuda lifts his head up, finds himself staring at the two children from earlier.

The boy looks from Matsuda, to Joyce, to the girl next to him.

“My sister wants to pet your dog,” he says, “but she’s not allowed to, is she?”

“I said you’re not the boss of me, idiot!” The girl protests, stamping her foot against the grass.

Matsuda smooths his hand down Joyce’s fur. Feels the concrete beneath his knees, cold and hard and textured. No smooth warehouse floor. Rolls the English over in his mind before he responds.

_You are here._

“Your brother’s right,” Matsuda says, slow at first. “This is a special kind of dog – I can’t let her get distracted.”

“Aren’t all dogs special?” The girl pushes. “And I won’t distract her, promise!”

Matsuda glances around the park.  _Where the hell are your parents?_

“She’s a service dog, dummy!” The boy says. “That’s what that big blue thing on her leash his for!”

The girl seems taken aback at that, and shuts her mouth. Watches Joyce for a moment, like maybe the dog herself will call the other two out on being wrong. The boy unwraps a lollipop, sticks it in his mouth.

“A service dog?” She repeats, after a moment. “Didn’t Pop have one of those?”

“Yeah,” the boy says, around his lollipop. “Because he kept remembering the war and stuff!”

Both their gazes flick to meet Matsuda’s, then, and he swallows. Doesn’t look away, though. Joyce knows how to create space between him and other people, should it come to that.

“I thought only old people were allowed to have service dogs,” the girl says. “People who were in the old wars and stuff. Before the internet existed.”

The boy slaps his forehead, side-eyes his sister.

“What?!” She asks. “He doesn’t  _look_  old!” She turns back to Matsuda. “You’re not old, are you?”

“No,” Matsuda laughs, shaking his head, relief soaking through his shoulders. A small part of him expected yelling. “I’m – I’m not even thirty yet.”

The girl tilts her head. “Then why do you get a special dog?”

The boy doesn’t interrupt this time, but tilts his head, waits for Matsuda’s answer.

Matsuda takes a breath, looks between them. He’s spoken about the case with his therapist. Kira support groups are still, unfortunately, peppered around the world. There’s no way they haven’t heard about it, no matter how young they are. Kids talk. Kids are smart.

_You are here. You are now._

It’s been five years.

He brushes a hand through Joyce’s fur again, lets out the breath. Looks at the both of them.

 “You kids ever heard of Kira?”

The girl goes still, eyes widening the way a balloon blows up. The boy’s mouth drops open, and the lollipop falls out.

They look at each other, and back to him.

“You – you mean  _the_ Kira?” The girl hisses.

“That crazy guy that killed all those people?” The boy adds, seeming not to notice his lost lollipop.

Matsuda nods. “I was one of the investigators looking for him,” he says. “It wasn’t easy, and I had to watch a lot of people get hurt.” He runs a hand over Joyce’s fur, smiles sideways at her. “Sometimes, it’s hard not to think about it, so Joyce helps distract me.”

The girl nods, her eyes still wide. “That’s why she was biting your hand before.”

Matsuda nods.

“How did you catch him?” The boy asks. “Did – did you get to meet Kira?”

The Warehouse flashes through Matsuda’s mind, just for a second, but he breathes in deep, feels the cold.

“I did,” he says, and both the kids straight-up gasp. “I can’t say any more about it, but I did.”

“Was he really crazy?” The girl asks.

Matsuda ponders, for a moment, standing back up. “Some people think so,” he says, smiling at both of them. “But I don’t.”

The boy raises an eyebrow. “But he killed all those people!”

“Believe me, I know,” Matsuda says. “But he – he thought he was doing something good.”

The children both stare at him, and Matsuda sighs.

“He wanted to get rid of all the bad people in the world,” Matsuda continues. “He wasn’t happy with how some people got away with things they should’ve been punished for. God knows he wasn’t the only one who wanted that.”

“Then why did you arrest him?” The boy asks. “If he only wanted to make the world better?”

Matsuda pauses, smiles sadly at him. “Because it wasn’t working,” he says. “It was never going to work, because people aren’t good people or bad people – they’re just people. They all deserved to live, to make up for what they did, to be happy.” Joyce nudges up against his leg, and he scruffs the back of her head. “Even him.”

Matsuda expects some kind of outrage, another dropped lollipop, but they both just nod at him.

“What’s that?” The girl asks, pointing to the bag at his side.

“Oats,” Matsuda says, and smiles wider. “I came to feed the ducks.”

“Knew it,” the girl says, “in your face, Marcus!”

Her brother groans. “Whatever, Amber.”

“Kids?” A woman a little older than him appears at the edge of the playground, eyes scanning, landing near Matsuda. She rushes over. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be on the phone so long,” she says, and her eyes meet Matsuda’s. A moment passes. “And who might you be?”

Matsuda opens his coat jacket, shows off his badge. “Detective Touta, M’am,” he says, and bows to her, then to the children. “It was nice talking to you, but I really should get going.”

He turns around, heads towards the lake. Marcus and Amber start babbling a few seconds after he leaves, and he smiles, focuses on the sunset. It’s almost over, now – the sky is a dim, dusty blue. He stops a few steps from the lake, the water shining like silver, and looks up.

The moon hangs in the sky, full and bright, glows softly on the tips of the trees, shines on the roadside. Lights up the night.

Matsuda smiles at the moon, and sits down, reaches for his bag of oats.

_Life goes on._

 


End file.
